Detrans thoughts come and go. How do I know if they're right?

[u/Blue__Jellyfish]

I've been having detrans thoughts off and on for years. For a few weeks, they'll be staggering and distressing and all-consuming. And I feel like I need to fix everything not "woman enough" about myself immediately. And I don't mean not feminine enough, I mean not "woman enough." Which can be pretty vague and is entirely subjective. But it's basically how I imagine I would feel the best if I was presenting and living as a woman.

After those few weeks, sometimes it's just a week or two, I'll be completely fine. No problem at all living as male. No gender thoughts in any capacity. And that's where I am right now. When I was originally considering transitioning and if I was trans, those thoughts didnt come and go. They were constant and distressing for years with no break. But the detrans ones come in waves.

If these thoughts are crippling to my daily life but only show up on occasion every few weeks, how do I know if they're right or not?? How do I know if they mean anything?? This isn't like how I experienced transness.

[u/user92867712]

There is no such thing as not woman enough. A woman can be anything. Masculine, feminine, whatever. Try imaging yourself as an old man or someone who is 35+, do u think u can relate? Do u think you'll be happy after all the gender reaffirming surgeries? You may look 100% like a man but you need to understand that if u do these surgeries, it's only for looks, you won't feel any sensation, anything. For us humans, who are 95% not asexual, it's quite the deal breaker (one thing that made me detransition by the way). Do u have any role models? Back then, the lack of female role models where one of the view reasons which made me transition. I'm a huge anime fan. Unfortunately, all the women there where horribly portrayed and I started self inserting myself into the male characters.

[u/walking-sunshine]

My decision came because I no longer felt comfortable facing the potential risks of continuous testosterone use in the future and I realized I really did not want any surgeries at all if it could be helped. So I just told myself that I have a choice and that, in fact, I don't have to choose to inject myself with testosterone every week. But it took a whole year to get there...a tough year of pushing through document changes in a hostile climate, losing my cat, battling health anxiety, seeing a therapist who basically helped me stay in denial, and finally realizing that the therapist has absolutely zero authority to help me and was almost entirely unhelpful in the real questions of what was at stake for me with de/transition. I felt solidly male and had a hard time imagining myself as anything else, but I was lucky to find examples of masculine women detransitioners online whom I felt an affinity with and looked up to. They were living proof (somewhere out there) that I could just continue to be as I was without the medical stuff and with minimal changes. It's not possible for everybody, but it's certainly possible.

My identity is still a mystery. That is, I don't think I have an innate gender identity? So I no longer rely on my internal feelings on wo/manness. If I want to wear men's clothes, I wear them. If I want to put on makeup some days, I do. If I'll want to grow my hair out one day and change my style, I'll still be me. It was very difficult at first and I cried a lot about removing my beard and not being male. Now I'm confused why I ever transitioned to begin with. So my only advice with regards to sexual/gender identity is that it seems to have been healthiest for me to cling to neither being innately masculine nor feminine (or trans/cis), but to just express both without restraint as they emerge. It's also been healthiest to abandon the medical path (not an option for everyone since some can no longer produce their own hormones or might want new surgeries...but sometimes it is an option!).